Prague Journal

Tuesday, July 12, 2005.

Ondra met me at Dejvicka at 7:30 am to drive down to Brno to meet Olga G., who had called just yesterday to suggest a meeting with her today. We made good time and were in Brno in 2 ½ hours, which gave us time to have coffee and plan our interview with Olga. We went to her office promptly at noon, where she greeted us warmly and spent 1 ½ hours with us. Ondra said he was surprised at how open she was. We were both very pleased. Olga was not only generous with her time and information, she was charming. We considered the interview a favor for us, but she presented us with a bottle of Moravian wine, some stationery, and a book about Tomas Bata as thank you gifts. A high point of the interview was when she showed us photos of her friend Tomas Bata at a company party earlier this spring. He is 99 years old and still going strong! She wants us to go to Zlin next week and see the town he built and the university that bears his name. This sounds wonderful, but Zlin is farther from Prague than Brno and my schedule is already full. We’ll see if we can pull it off.
This evening’s dinner was at Café Slavia, looking out at Prague Castle, with Yehudes. She only has one more exam –this one on physiology – to end the term. She’s planning on going to Guyana with my brother and son and nephews in early August and is very excited. She’s exhausted from her medical school studies here, but still very enthusiastic about the prospect of achieving her dream of being a doctor in the foreseeable future. As always, it was a pleasure to see her and chat about our experiences here in Prague. Yehudes is one of the many people we’ve met here with whom we’ll keep in touch for a very long time.

posted by JWinn @ 10:23 PM